Wednesday, December 05, 2012
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CFACT – via ClimateDepot.com and Planet Gore – went to Doha, Qatar, and asked the delegates of the annual anti-climate-change conference to test a gas mask that "sequesters" carbon dioxide (which it didn't, of course):

You may watch the people from numerous countries of the world to agree that the horrible mask is comfortable, they're ready to wear it for hours a day and while they're sleeping, recommend it to children, pets, and so on.

What makes it even more amazing is that the pranksters say that they're from CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. I think that everyone who follows the climate issue must kind of know that it's one of the rather visible skeptical groups. Those people don't have a clue.

Their vigilance is equal to zero, despite the fact that similar pranks have succeeded in the past – and they will probably always succeed in the future because these green people just can't use their brains if they have one at all. They're never capable of learning anything from their blunders. Recall Penn and Teller's wonderful petition to ban water. Most of the green folks banned it, just because the true facts about water were accompanied by emotional formulations describing where the "dihydrogen monoxide" has penetrated. They instantly became water-haters because this ideology was formulated in the same way as their psychopathological movement formulates hateful remarks about another vital compound, CO2.

Those people don't necessarily have to be evil but the atmosphere of mindless group think at similar gatherings is totally unbelievable. It's clear that these people couldn't even afford to say that they wouldn't wear the gas mask because they felt they would instantly become pariahs. It's viewed as a moral duty for the participants to support an arbitrarily insane intervention into the human freedom – even their own freedom – if it is said to reduce CO2 emissions. Now, imagine that these totally insane, brainwashed, fanatical people are allowed to influence the actual world. I just find this idea utterly stunning. In a more sensible world, the participants of the Doha conference – who would be ready to impose mandatory gas masks on you and your family if they had just a little bit more power – should be monitored by the intelligence agencies of civilized countries in the same way as Al Qaeda and bombers would occasionally be sent to deal with these groups when certain red lines are crossed.

I am not saying that the CO2 resulting from exhalation is negligible. It's actually not negligible at all. It represents something like 5-10 percent of the mankind's CO2 emissions. The total amount of CO2 we exhale is about between 1/4 and 1/2 of the total CO2 that transportation produces during the same time. And transportation produces the same amount as manufacturing and the same amount as agriculture, roughly speaking.

It's not my goal to update the exact numbers here. The point is that our breathing is in no way negligible – it's one of the major parts of the equation if you divide the sources of CO2 sufficiently finely – and suggesting that there's something wrong about CO2 emissions is indeed a path towards the ban of the normal, free breathing. That's really why people proposing CO2 regulation are insane radical terrorists and loons who must be treated on par with Al Qaeda. It's about our freedom to breathe; it's about our freedom to live, to perform and display basic processes defining life. If the temperature changes by a degree due to the human breathing at some point (so far the influence is surely less than 0.05 °C although we don't know the exact number), then it's how things should be.

It was five years after Nye appeared on TV with Dick Lindzen and humiliated himself in the face of the textbook authority personified by Lindzen; Julian Morris – offering some economist's common sense on priorities – and the alarmist babe proposing the Nuremberg Trials for deniers whose name I forgot but I will recover the memory in 25 seconds ;-) was there, too. Yup, Heidi Cullen.

Morano did a superb job – although he looked a bit unprepared to Nye's emotions focusing on CO2's being bad by itself, regardless of the climate. It should have been debunked more clearly.

What Nye and Morano would say was kind of expected. But I hadn't known that guys like Piers Morgan – whom I really know as a jury member in the American Idol only – would be so thoroughly brainwashed by the AGW panic as well. He's kind of unbelievable, almost on the same level as Nye. It seemed he wanted to crucify Morano for even suggesting that the right way to solve this non-problem is to do nothing.

Morgan would just pick several random pieces of weather data from random places that he considered extreme – although they were not extreme relatively to the history, by any stretch of imagination – and instantly linked them to CO2 regulation. It's just utterly amazing for me to see that similar guys fail to use their brains so miserably.

How do you like that crap? First sentence reads; The Middle East and North Africa will be especially hard hit by climate change in the coming decades, the World Bank said in a report ...

They had to cut it down so it would be a catchy hook, so of course the words they choose to leave out are "will be" and "in the coming decades" which in reality should have read "MAYBE?!?" and "NEVER" with the exact same emphasis I gave them.

One Million one hundred and ten thousand results for that crap on Google. That's discouraging.

Dear papertiger, it would be fun to ask the .hippies in Doha whether they would wear a GOP symbol on their faces to reduce CO2 emissions, indeed. LOL.

Right, in 2012, the Islamic world will be especially hard hit by climate change. Everyone will be especially hard hit, according to the propaganda, they're just changing the attribution depending on the timing.

The focus on the Islamic victims is one of the few silver linings of 2012 in climate hysteria. You may see that this "World Bank report" is in no way an isolated example of this new focus. You may read lots of articles such as

called "Some wish Islam would inform climate debate" in which the Associated Press sketches the proposal to unify the global warming church with the Islamist church. What can we say – yes, they're a good match.

Huffington Post also called Islamic leaders to place Al Gore next to Mohammed in their sermons because he's missing there so far, they think:

what a punk that Morgan is. Boss, remember I mentioned that quirk in the American personality, where we give undeserved respect to people with a European accent? Morgan trades on that. Built a career out of it.

Right at the end there Morgan screwed up and said "There are many scientists who would take issue with your (Morano's) view."

If there are many scientists who believe this bulshit, why do the Morgan's always have to resort to swamp rats and gutter snipes like Bill Nye and Heidi Cullen to be their mouth piece?

They can't find a real scientist who is willing to go on National TV and make a fool of themselves, that's why. Either that or like Micheal Mann, the pushers of the global warming tripe are worried their TV appearances will be used against them in court.

One other thing I meant to mention. In your link a fellow named Hassan says "Islam calls for the protection of the environment, but the Muslim countries are mostly poor and they didn't cause pollution and aren't affected by climate change."

At least part of that is true. And one great storehouse of knowledge which hasn't been tapped in the battle over global warming, as near as I can tell, are the ancient writings of the Arabs. They've had civilization longer than anybody, and given their situation, their ancients must have been quite vigilant about rainfall totals, harvests, and the like. There has to be records, perhaps obscured by the prism of religious superstition, but written down none the less, showing that what Hassan talked about is true and has been true for many centuries.

This reasoning is pretty terrible. If I want to reduce taxes by 1%, it doesn't follow that I want to abolish them. Similarly, if I want to reduce CO2 emissions by x%, then it doesn't follow that I want to end exhalation.

Also, people who oppose "dihydrogen monoxide" don't hate water. They are just confused about science, and haven't thought things through clearly. You are ascribing to them a consistent and rational worldview, which they clearly don't have.

Similarly, the Doha people who were "tricked" were probably being polite. We should be concerned only when they start echoing the anti-exhalation position.

This reasoning is pretty terrible. If I want to reduce taxes by 1%, it doesn't follow that I want to abolish them.

In general, it doesn't. In my case, it does. ;-)

There has been a big difference between the taxes and the CO2 emissions. The CO2 emissions have been whatever they were based on the behavior of free people within the law so no one may plan them; tax rates are determined by politicians - who are representing people.

So one may talk about adjustments to the tax rates. But talking about things like anticipating the production of CO2 means a planned economy, and given the omnipresence of CO2, it's really a totalitarian society if it obeys the wishes of those who "want" to reduce emissions by x%.

If you want to reduce emissions by x%, why don't you do the only polite thing that such people should do - namely shut up and fuck off?

The point is not about taxes, it's about any quantity. I might want to lose 10 pounds, but not 100 pounds. I'm surprised I even have to explain this.

Similarly with planned-vs-free economy. While during the Cold War, there were stark differences between the capitalist and communist economies, often now there are markets with freedoms that are limited by regulations. So limiting the amount of arsenic dumped in a river does not immediately turn us into the Soviet Union.

As for CO2, there are two leading ways that a government, or group of governments, can regulate it. One is tradable permits, in which the government can limit the amount of legally produced CO2 while letting the market determine its price, and the other is a carbon tax, in which the government can set the price of CO2 and let the market determine the amount produced.

Lubos writes: "I completely agree with that. It has always been my main point in this situation that people who want to ban new things for environmental reasons are irrational uneducated imbeciles and joiner"

Yeah, like these fools:http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2012-releases/air-pollution-improve-life-expectancy-us.html

There are at least two huge differences between CO2 and the weight of a human that only utterly unreasonable people may be overlooking.

First, an individual is free to eat, eat less, or eat more, so to a certain extent, his weight is within his capabilities to be influenced. On the other hand, it's none of your business to plan or command what the CO2 concentration should be.

Second, body mass that may be lower or higher by 10 pounds may be justified by rational criteria because 10 pounds makes an impact on many things and the ideal compromise might be somewhere, not far from the average person's mass.

On the other hand, there can't be any advantage about 350 ppm or 450 ppm which are pretty much indistinguishable. These trace levels don't impact animals in any way; only plants grow about 10% faster and larger at 450 ppm than at 350 ppm. So unlike the case of the body mass, a rational expanation to prefer 350 ppm over 450 ppm just can't exist.

At any rate, in your whole life, you may change the concentration by something like 0.0000001 ppm, so you're completely detached from reality if you think that you may change the future concentration by dozens of ppm or more. And as I said, even hundreds of ppm wouldn't really matter.

So limiting the amount of arsenic dumped in a river does not immediately turn us into the Soviet Union.

But regulating CO2 surely does because CO2 is necessary in basic manifestations of life and prosperous economy.

Yes, these have costs, but so does climate change

It's a fabricated lie. Climate change doesn't have any predictable nonzero costs. It's an external and largely unpredictable process that defines the background for the economy and the financial planning of any individual or any nation.

These people don't want to ban anything. These scientists just *observed* an apparent correlation between the free market's ability to lower the amount of pollutants in the air and the increasing life expectancy. Needless to say, the lower amount of toxins in the air is far from being the only reason why the life expectancy has gone up.

I would also stress that the article says that the amount of pollutants in the air went down between 2000 and 2007 which implies that these authors happily don't consider CO2 to be a pollutant. If CO2 were counted as a pollutant, it would be by far the most represented pollutant in the air and its concentration went up by 5% just between 2000 and 2007. But they say that pollutants went down, so CO2 is clearly not counted.